New Brunswick Earns a "D" Grade on the Education and Skills Report Card

New Brunswick earns a “D” and ranks 22nd among 26 jurisdictions on the Education and Skills report card. This is the first "How Canada Performs: Education and Skills" report card to look at provincial performance in an international context.

Ottawa, June 26, 2014 – New Brunswick earns a “D” and ranks 22nd among 26 jurisdictions on the Education and Skills report card. This is the first "How Canada Performs: Education and Skills" report card to look at provincial performance in an international context.

“New Brunswick's strengths are in high school and college attainment," said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Industry and Business Strategy. “However, New Brunswick performs poorly on student skills in reading, math and science; and adult skills in numeracy, literacy and problem solving in technology-rich environments."

Highlights

New Brunswick performs poorly on student skills in reading, math and science, and on adult skills in numeracy, literacy and problem-solving in technology rich environments.

The province ranks second on the proportion of its population that have attained a college diploma.

New Brunswick has a small gap between the math scores of Canadian-born and immigrant students.

New Brunswick gets an “A” grade on the equity in learning outcomes indicator, which measures the gap in performance between native-born and immigrant students on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test.

Overall, however, New Brunswick students did not perform well on the 2012 PISA skills tests of 15-year-old students, and earns four “D” grades and two "C" grades on high-level and inadequate skills in reading, math and science.

How Canada Performs is an ongoing research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada’s socio-economic performance. The How Canada Performs website presents data and analysis on Canada’s performance compared to peer countries in six performance categories: Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education and Skills, Health, and Society.

Released today, and building on previous “How Canada Performs“ analyses, the Education and Skills report card is the second of six to be produced over the next year on Canadian and provincial socio-economic performance. The Economy report card was published in May 2014. The remaining report cards will follow over the next year.